New Music Tuesday 30 - Have Mercy

Posted by Alex Bohea on May 27, 2014

A weekly feature here at The Great Divide Blog is our New Music Tuesday; introducing you to an artist or band you may not have heard of. We can’t guarantee that you won’t have heard of them, but if that’s the case, it might give you a little reminder to revisit them sometime soon.

This week it’s Baltimore’s native sons, Have Mercy. I found this record thanks to a friend on Instagram who simply posted the album cover for “The Earth Pushed Back” with the caption “Album of the year.” Well, it’s a bold statement and I have quite a few arguments against it but you still cannot take away how phenomenal of an album this truly is. The record was released via Topshelf Records who are a record label I cannot recommend enough. I know I constantly talk about these, Run for Cover and Count Your Lucky Stars but seriously, for this kind of music, do you really need anything else?

Have Mercy are a band that managed to convey an incredible amount of emotion in traditional structures and with effective songwriting, a art that seems to be falling by the wayside lately. Aggressive, melodic, catchy; this album is everything you want from a band who sound like Have Mercy. Punknews described them as a cross between “…Jimmy Eat World and Small Brown Bike”. Seeing as I couldn’t put that more eloquently myself and as that is probably all the selling point you’ll need, check out “Let’s Talk About Your Hair”, a personal favourite of mine, below: